It's not just swords flying in this Chinese spectacle; everything's zinging around, usually into your face in 3D: weapons, ropes, furniture, crockery, even people – the climactic showdown is a mid-air duel in a sandstorm. The plot is similarly up in the air. Building on King Hu's original 1960s Dragon Inn, and Hark's own very decent 1990s remake, New Dragon Gate Inn, it again holes up an assortment of renegades and evil imperial agents at a remote desert hostel and watches the intrigue unfold. Li is the star in name but his lone vigilante is just one of several characters in the mix, including an escaped pregnant concubine, a tattooed Tartar warrior queen, Li's old flame (who poses as a man), and a dispassionate eunuch assassin. With all the double-crosses, lookalikes and hidden agendas, things get mighty confusing, but the action is ludicrously epic, amping up the old-school combat with superhuman powers, bizarre weaponry and comically overzealous computer effects. It's nonsense, but somehow irresistible.

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